Rosemary Frisino Toohey has written 40 plays and had more than 140 productions in the US, Canada, England and Germany. While playwriting is now her passion and her art, she came to theater only after a successful career in radio news.
After graduating from the College of Notre Dame, she started at WETT in Ocean City, moved on to WITH in Baltimore, KLOK in San Jose, CA, and WHDH in Boston. She then joined NBC’s all-news radio network “NIS” at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York, where she met her husband Bill. When NIS foundered, she went to news-talk WMCA, and then began anchoring at all-news 1010 WINS in New York.
In 1980, the Toohey’s first child, a son, was born. That same year, her first play was staged at Ensemble Studio Theatre. THE NEW YORK TIMES called it “promising.” A daughter was born in 1982 and a second son came along in 1984. Frisino Toohey never abandoned her writing completely but between motherhood, working at WINS and stringing for Radio 2WS in Sydney, Australia, there were other demands to be met. When her husband accepted a job at a public radio station in her hometown of Baltimore, the family re-located and Frisino Toohey began anchoring at WTOP in Washington, DC. The family grew with the adoption of a daughter in 1992, the Toohey’s fourth child.
In 1996, Frisino Toohey accepted WTOP’s offer to work full-time in morning drive, but in June ‘97, everything changed. Driving to work at 4am one morning she was rear-ended at high speed on the Capital Beltway by a hit-and-run driver. The car was totaled and she was hospitalized with serious injuries. The crash became a turning point. She and her husband decided she should commit herself to playwriting. By early ’98, she had completed her first full-length play, GLADYS IN WONDERLAND. It was staged as part of the Baltimore Playwrights Festival, is now published by Playscripts, Inc. in New York, and has been produced a dozen times in the US and Canada.
She’s won or made finalist in many contests, taking first prize in the Next Generation Playwriting Contest in New York, the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival (twice), and the Oglebay Institute Towngate Theatre Contest (twice.) Her comedy about 2 philosophical lobsters, IN THE TANK (Dramatic Publishing), has been produced more than 50 times and is included in the collections of dozens of university libraries. Another comedy, SOCKS (Lazy Bee Scripts), about footwear left behind in a clothes dryer, has been produced in the US and England and will be done in 2012 in New Zealand.
Her award-winning drama on war, THE BODY WASHER, was produced in the Samuel French Off-off Broadway Festival, New York’s 15-minute Play Fest, and the Page-to-Stage Festival at the Kennedy Center. Another drama, AMERICA’S CHERRY PIE (originally titled SCHOOL SHOOTER), won the playwright a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. Frisino Toohey is a member of The Dramatists Guild.
As a member of the Screen Actors Guild, she also works in film and on TV. She’s been seen in ROCKET SCIENCE, ROCKY BALBOA, GODS AND GENERALS and THE WIRE, among others, and she continues anchoring part-time at WTOP. She and her husband Bill recently moved to the waterfont nieghborhood of Canton in Baltimore where they are relishing city life.
Back to the top
